Carrie Link

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WOOHOO

Today my little girl is 14. I'd like to say it's flown by. I'd also like to say that being her mother has given my life endless amounts of joy and glee. I'd like to say that while neither of those are true, there is no one on the planet I'm prouder of, and for whom I am more grateful.

My little girl has had her share of ups and downs. A year ago she was on three medications, including one that would scare the pants off you if I told you about it, but I won't. Suffice it to say she wasn't happy, and nobody else around here was either.

It was just about a year ago I decided to "leave her" with her highly capable, loving, willing, job with ultimate flexibility, father, and go "find myself." To split hairs, I left for 4 weeks, came home for a week, and left for another four. I made it my ultimate goal to figure out WTF the legacy was I was passing on to her, and to be far more deliberate in that.

I came home and wrote a book about my journey. I compared my book to Eat, Pray, Love. I stood on the platform that I don't know one single woman that could possibly take off for a year, travel the world, be paid while doing so, and come home a different person. I did, however, know at least 100 women that could find SOME amount of time to "escape" their lives, re-evaluate them, and make a profound difference in ALL relationship dynamics, not to mention their relationship with themselves.

My book is being read by agents and publishers now. It is striking a nerve and a chord, such was the impetus for the post I recently wrote about that. The reactions and responses, two very different things I've learned, fascinate me. They also fine tune my process so I move away from a state of defensiveness, to one of unapologetic, calm and a deep knowing peace. Let's just say I'm still very much IN that process, not THROUGH it (obviously).

Today my little girl is 14. Today she is not on three medications. She is not on the scare-your-pants-off one, that was the first to go. She is happy. She has a large, wonderful, true blue circle of friends that I couldn't have better chosen for her myself. She is physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, psychologically, academically, THRIVING.

I can't go anywhere without hearing beautiful compliments about my daughter, and the profound changes others are have seen in her.

The quote from the book, COMEBACK, "Results don't lie. Results will always show you what your true intention, conscious or not, was," brings me great peace. A year ago if I'd read that quote I would have gone screaming for the hills. Oh, wait, that's exactly what I DID do. I went. Screaming. For. The. Hills.

But I came back.

There are lots of ways mothers leave their children. Some never actually take a step out the door, but they aren't "there."

There are mothers that leave their children in the bottom of their wine bottles.

There are mothers that leave their children when they end their marriages with high drama and major explosives.

There are mothers that leave their children by never cutting the apron strings. They are so fused with their children that their children can't live without them. They have missed their primary responsibility as parents, if you ask me, and that is to give your children WINGS to fly. They clip them, instead.

There are as many ways to "leave your children" as there are mothers with children. And many of these mothers DO return, one way or another. They come back.

I came back.

Today my little girl is 14.

I came back.

I'm so glad I did.

I'm equally glad I left.



* Photo: "Elephant - Mother and Child" by Jamini Roy